Castro Pretorio

Castro Pretorio is the 18th rione of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. XVIII, and it is located within the Municipio I. The rione takes its name by the ruins of the Castrum Praetorium, the barracks of the Praetorian Guard, included in the Aurelian Walls.

During the Imperial age, the area belonged to the regio Alta Semita (Latin for 'high pathway'). At that time, a huge part of the present-day rione was gloomy and infamous, as it housed the Campus Sceleratus, a large area just outside Porta Collina (between Via Venti Settembre and Piazza dell'Indipendenza) where Vestal virgins who infringed their chastity vows were buried alive.

Another landmark of the borough was the Castra Praetoria, the barracks of the Praetorian Guard established by Tiberius between AD 21 and AD 23, later incorporated into the Aurelian Walls.

Between 298 and 306, to serve the densely populated quarters of the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline hills, the majestic Baths of Diocletian were built, whose remains can still be seen along Via Cernaia and in Piazza dei Cinquecento. The baths occupied the area between Piazza della Repubblica, Piazza dei Cinquecento, Via Volturno and Via Venti Settembre. They definitively ceased activity in 537, due to the cutting of the aqueducts during the Gothic war.

In the eastern part of Piazza dei Cinquecento there was the agger of Servius Tullius, located near the former Porta Viminale, whose remains still rise in front of the Termini railway station. In the rione there were two other gates that no longer exist, Porta Collina and Porta Nomentana, belonging to the Servian and to the Aurelian Walls respectively.

Following to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Rome began to depopulate, and the area of the rione was among the first boroughs to be abandoned, being peripheral, unsafe and lacking of water. In the following centuries, little hamlets arose only around some major churches, such as the basilicas of Santa Prassede, Santa Pudenziana and Santa Maria Maggiore, thanks to their convents.

During the Renaissance, Sixtus V promoted the urbanisation of the area, with the construction of the Strada Felice, a 2 kilometers straight line between Trinità dei Monti and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (it coincides with the present-day Via Sistina, Via delle Quattro Fontane and Via Agostino Depretis) and of the Acquedotto Felice: both the road and the aqueduct recall the name of the Pope, Felice Peretti. The refurbishments promoted by Sixtus V also involved the intersection between Via Sistina and Via Pia, where the Quattro Fontane were positioned, thus creating a scenic viewpoint where people used to stop in summertime and enjoy "the good air", which is unimaginable today. It must be said that Cardinal Peretti had shown his great interest in this area even before he became Pope, as he ordered the construction of a huge villa, with a park richly adorned with fountains and portals, between Santa Maria Maggiore and the present Via Marsala and Via del Viminale.

In the 17th century some Jesuits, back from a mission in the Far East, established here and nicknamed the borough Macao: the name was widely used up to the post-war period and is currently evoked by a street of the rione (Via del Macao).